


flowers, soft beneath my heels

by tobeconvincedoflove



Series: TRC Prompt Fills [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Magician Adam Parrish, Prompt Fill, adam feels the feels and so does noah, adam is trying, adam parrish needs a hug, by mentioning robert parrish u know what warning applies, noah and adam in the aftermath of adam killing whelk, this is short for once!, time is a circle or whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 03:39:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15452571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tobeconvincedoflove/pseuds/tobeconvincedoflove
Summary: Adam wonders, briefly, if he's better than Barrington Whelk. Noah knows he is.(title from Flowers // Anaïs Mitchell)





	flowers, soft beneath my heels

**Author's Note:**

> prompt fill: I never really see many people explore Adam and Noah relationship, especially in the aftermath of Whelk. I can’t help but wonder about your thoughts on how Adan handled being the cause of someone’s death like that.

Adam is tired. This not a new or profound experience for him, exhaustion seeping in through every pore of his body at the first available opportunity, but it’s the easiest for him to focus on. 

He hates his apartment. 

Adam hates how quiet it is, how the floorboards creak and groan with his every step, how it shakes in the wind, how the roof suddenly stops working at the first hint of rain. Adam hates the air mattress, in danger of becoming more duct-tape than mattress itself, hates how he can’t even fucking afford a table, doing his homework hunched over an empty grocery-store crate. 

It’s so quiet. 

The second Adam sets down his pen for the night, Cabeswater is whispering in his deaf ear. It was two weeks ago, and he can’t, he fucking can’t deal with any of this. He thinks about that night in Cabeswater and wants to walk into the goddamn ocean; he thinks about paying rent and how many hours he’s going to have to work to afford this and Aglionby and food and it’s like he’s staring down a wall so tall and sleek and wide that he’s never going to get around it, never going to dig under it, never going to punch through it, never be able to scale it. 

It’s so much. 

That’s why Adam doesn’t realize when Noah appears, not at first. 

“Hey.” Noah’s voice is soft, but Adam’s eye goes straight to the bruise under his eye, thinks about Whelk and just wants to pass out and not face this. Adam has always felt dirty, but it’s never felt so under-his-skin as it does right now. It’s like, before Adam became both a servant to an ancient forest and a murderer in one single exhale, if he could just wash his hands for longer or with better soap, the dirt would eventually leave him. Now it’s an infection, burrowed deep in his bones and between his ribs and in the capillaries in his lungs, tracing pitch-black constellations across everything that’s Adam. 

“Hi, Noah.” Adam’s voice sounds weird, even to him. He’s sitting on floor, and Noah is next to him. 

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Noah says, fidgets with his fingers. “Why?”

“It’s not you,” Adam starts. “I’m just… Monmouth is hard, right now.” It’s not a lie, but it’s not true enough that it would get by Ronan. 

“No. I mean, yes, you’re avoiding them, but also me,” Noah clarifies. “Is this about Whelk?”

Adam just takes a shaky breath, tries to force his hands to still in his lap. It’s dark, the one overhead light flickering just a little bit. Adam needs to replace it. There’s so much that Adam needs to do. 

“Gansey hates this place. Ronan calls it a shithole. I’m here because they won’t come here,” Adam explains. 

“You know that it won’t stop Ronan, not for much longer. Gansey is just… Gansey thinks you need space, after everything,” Noah responds. “I think it’s great, by the way.”

“You’re a fucking ghost,” is what Adam shoots back. It sounds too much like Ronan to taste anything but bitter on Adam’s own tongue.

“Yeah, because Whelk killed me.” Noah says it so plainly, eyes warm and cautious as they look into Adam’s own. 

“And I killed him,” Adam says, voice hollow. 

“Oh. So that’s what this is.” If Gansey had said this, if Ronan had said this, Adam would have exploded. Instead, he feels the spark ignite, but it’s smothered almost immediately. “Adam, it’s not the same.”

“I _know_ that, but—” Adam has to cut himself off, has to breathe. “I still killed him.”

“Cabeswater killed Whelk.” Noah’s voice is firm, more solid than Adam has felt since his father shoved him down the steps of the trailer. “You didn’t.”

“We’re the same fucking thing, Noah,” Adam responds. “I gave it my hands. I gave it my eyes. And then I was scared. Cabeswater responded. So it’s not a separate thing. Cabeswater killed Whelk because of me, could have killed Ronan and Gansey and Blue if they hadn’t gone into the tree.” Adam presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, eyes feeling dry and swollen, Cabeswater swirling uncomfortably inside of him. 

“That’s not fair and you know it, Adam. Whelk was pointing a gun at you. There was no other choice,” Noah says. “You didn’t have a choice.” 

“Why do I feel like I made the wrong one, then?” Adam’s voice cracks. “I just… Noah, are you okay? After all of that with Whelk.” 

“I’m better now that he’s gone,” Noah says. “I know that sounds awful, but it’s the safest I’ve felt in seven years. Which is stupid, because I’m dead. He can’t do anything else to me.” 

“It’s not awful. I think I would be relieved, too,” Adam admits. 

“You weren’t, when Ronan punched your dad,” Noah points out. 

“You know that’s different,” Adam says. “That wasn’t how I wanted it to go.” 

“But does it… are you still… would you have… ” Noah can’t seem to spit out what he wants to ask. 

“I wish I could wish he was dead.” Adam’s voice is hollow. “But I think I’m more scared than I was before. Knowing he could show up here.” 

“I could never wish Whelk was dead, either. Didn’t mean that he didn’t hurt me,” Noah says, his hand covering Adam’s own. “But I still don’t think it was you.” 

“What do you mean?” 

There’s something that Noah doesn’t talk to Adam about, about his problem with time. It catches on Noah, now, sticks him in times and places he wasn’t ever meant to see. 

This past week, Noah has been caught a lot on one day. He doesn’t even know what year, what day; Adam could be three, could be four, but it’s not a good day. The sky is murky and dark, breeze threatening instead of refreshing. Adam’s cheek is the same color, dark and dirty, and his arms are peppered in the same colors. He’s outside, alone in the dirt with sticks and rocks and dirt and whatever his imagination is making into reality. 

That’s always how it starts. 

Noah doesn’t know if Adam is locked out, if his mother is just inside, but he can guess which one is closer to reality. He’s not enough of himself to be seen, but he wants to think that some part of Adam that will know Ronan knows him now. Adam was so lonely. Adam is so lonely now. Noah can’t move forward, only back, but he hopes and prays and dreams that there’s a time that Noah can’t see where Adam knows he’s loved.

Adam is loved now, but being loved and knowing are two completely different entities. 

Noah tries to make him see, in the right time. But what matters right now is that Adam is outside, alone and hurting and hungry and just watching the storm approach. That’s why Noah thinks Adam is alone, because Noah hasn’t ever been able to see a child that isn’t ready to run from a storm like that. But Adam just sits and plays until the storm starts suddenly. He doesn’t move. This young Adam, with cupid curls and chubby arms, breaks and talks to sticks. 

Noah can’t feel the water, but he imagines it’s warm. In Adam’s hand, a stick grows leaves. He doesn’t notice, too busy sticking his tongue out for water. His eyes go to a flower, a weed, really. A dandelion. It’s too dry of a summer to just be there, and Noah knows that Cabeswater is here, too. Cabeswater has always been able to know Adam in a way that Noah can’t, knows this Adam in a way that his own parents don’t want to. 

Adam picks up the flower, meaty toddler hands gentle as he picks it. His cheeks puff out, and then Adam blows on it, makes a wish that only he seems to know. Where each particle falls, there’s a new flower. They’re not all dandelions, some ones that Noah has only seen in Cabeswater, but they’re bright and colorful and alive in a way the trailer park can never seem to be. 

Adam picks them all, gathers them into his arms, treating each one with such a gentleness and care that mimics the way his fingers would eventually flit over a paper in class, or interact with the complexities lurking underneath the hood of the Pig. But what makes Noah break, just a little, is Adam’s smile. He’s so happy, eyes unguarded, childlike wonder seeping out as he spins and follows the trail of flowers in patterns around the yard, hair sticking to his forehead and entire body dripping with the rainwater. 

Noah thinks, not for the first time, that Adam Parrish is capable of immense joy. It’s so hard to see in the right time, not with the constant cloud of exhaustion and anxiety and fear that seems to build up into a storm in Adam’s head, clouds saturated with emotion but unable to let the first drop of rain fall. This Adam equates rain to how many buckets he has to use to stop the water from entering his apartment, but the other Adam is outside in the rain, picking flowers. It’s like Cabeswater feeds off of Adam’s delighted noises, the way he coos and oohs at the beautiful things Cabeswater puts into his hands, until there’s no room left. 

Adam lays down on a bed of flower petals and grass, soft and delicate, sticks a pollen-covered thumb in his mouth and goes to sleep in the Henrietta. 

Noah never sees what happens next, if his parents find them like that, or if Adam wakes up covered in rainwater and dirt. So when Adam what he means when he says it wasn’t Adam, Noah knows his answer.

“You have always been Cabeswater’s magician. Whelk has never been anything to it at all.” 

Adam doesn’t respond to that, but his shoulder start to shake and Noah thinks the clouds are finally about to give. He lets Noah wrap his arms around Adam, lets him lead them both the air mattress, holds him as best as he’s able as Adam finally releases some of the thunder, some of the rain. Noah thinks that Cabeswater sent Noah to Adam tonight, a gift as genuine as the flowers all those years ago, to weather a different kind of storm. 

Noah knows Adam has more storms coming. There are the ones where Ronan will step in, hold Adam’s shaking shoulders and dream him a cure for his cracked hands and that soon enough it won’t be Noah that Cabeswater gifts Adam, anymore. But for right now, just for right now, Noah will try his best to be the comfort, to let Adam rest. 

The air mattress is nowhere near as soft as Cabeswater’s bed of flowers, Noah’s hands will never be as warm as a summer rain, but it’s what they have to work with. For now, it’s enough to send Adam to sleep. 

For now, it’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This is short and dumb, but lmk what you think! Also if you have something to prompt, please do so in the comments or @ thoseunheard on tumblr!


End file.
